Street Fighter V Update Pulled Because It Made PCs Vulnerable To Malware

The update also installed some more shocking, however: a rootkit for PC versions of the game. As The Register reported late yesterday,

A fresh update for Capcom’s Street Fighter V for PCs includes a knock-out move: a secret rootkit that gives any installed application kernel-level privileges.

This means any malicious software on the system can poke a dodgy driver installed by SFV to completely take over the Windows machine. Capcom claims it uses the driver to stop players from hacking the high-def beat ‘em up to cheat. Unfortunately, the code is so badly designed, it opens up a full-blown local backdoor.

So if Capcom’s nickle-and-dime approach to downloadable content wasn’t already getting on your nerves, don’t worry, because now, if you owned the game on PC at least, they may have just blown up your computer’s security settings.

Don’t worry though, as Capcom was eventually able to roll out a fix for the issue its update had created, that is they reverted to an earlier PC version of the game while still including the new content.

The the part of the update that caused the problem was introduced with the intention of preventing people from cheating in the game and taking advantage of currency exploits. As Capcom announced on Steam just prior to the update:

The anti-crack solution does not require online connectivity in order to play the game in offline mode; however, players will be required to click-confirm each time they boot up the game. This step allows ‘handshake’ to take place between the executable and the dependent driver prior to launch.

It’s the last sort of thing a game like Street Fighter V, struggling for its former place as undisputed top-dog in the world of fighting games, needed.